


Works and Days

by Jintian



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-01-15
Updated: 1999-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/Jintian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few hours including family/partner bonding in the lives of the agents during a time of discontent. Set during Season 6, post-"Fight the Future."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Works and Days

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first fanfic I ever wrote. Rewind, be kind.

  
There will be time, there will be time  
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;  
There will be time to murder and create  
And time for all the works and days of hands  
That lift and drop a question on your plate;

T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

  
In the dream he was twelve again and he stood on the roof of the J. Edgar Hoover Building at dawn. The wind swirled around him with early morning sounds of a city coming to life -- scattered cars honking and rushing past on the street a dizzying distance below, the rising hum of voices and human activity. He made the mistake of glancing over the edge of the roof, and the world spun crazily, the distant sidewalk seeming to rush up to meet him.

In the middle of this fear attack he became aware that he held someone's hand, warm and feminine, the grip strong and pulling him back to himself. Strands of memory and hope coalesced into one wish, the one he always inevitably voiced in his dreams.

 _Samantha?_ his dreamself asked, in a boy's voice that cracked on the last syllable, and he turned his head through air that suddenly felt thick, slowing his movements as though he were trying to reach the world through transparent pudding.

He expected to see a skinny girl, her brown hair bound in braids, shorter than him and looking up with those eyes that had trusted him once. Eyes that sometimes tortured him now. But instead it was a woman in a tailored suit, one he knew almost as well as he knew himself, yet who still remained an enigma and mystery. She was slightly taller than his boy height, looking down with blue impenetrable gaze. The wind made her red hair fly around her face.

 _Scully?_

She smiled, a slight widening of the line of her mouth. He realized how close they stood to the line where the roof stopped and air and gravity began, and started to back away, meaning to pull her with him. His steps through the thick air seemed to take eternities to make their arcs and land again on the concrete with echoes like drumbeats.

But she remained where she stood, looking back at him with that distant smile, still holding his hand. Her feet encased in shoes with sensible thick heels, only inches from the edge.

 _Scully, what...?_

She raised one pale finger to her lips. The breath she made around it whispered to join the wind. _Shhhh..._

The dream Scully turned to look down at the street busying itself beneath them. He felt himself moving to her side again, still with those agonizingly labored movements, his heart beginning a drumbeat counterpoint with apprehension.

She focused on him now, caressing his smooth boy's cheek with a cool hand, and leaned to place a chaste kiss on his lips. _I want to believe_ , she murmured, and he froze as she stepped off of the roof, dragging him with her.

The cry was forced out of him in a breathless _No!_ as the concrete of the roof moved through suddenly thin air and slammed into his chest. He was stretched out horizontally on the surface dangling the weight of her body from one hand. His arm felt like it was being ripped out of its socket. He could feel panic in every cell as he gripped her fragile fingers with as much strength as he could muster. She simply hung below him with a serene gaze as traffic rolled beneath her feet with sickening speed.

 _Oh, God, just hold on Scully!_ he babbled, trying to force scrawny kid muscles into pulling her back up onto the roof with him. _Hold on!_ Tears pricked his eyes and throat.

The wind whipped her hair around her eyes as she let go, and it stole his screams as he watched her plummet to the cement, her silence still betraying nothing.

*

Now he jerks awake in the silent darkness of his apartment; the leather of his couch creaks tiredly, the only sound. Every sense is turned on suddenly and he reaches for his gun without conscious thought. It is in his hand and he is on his feet before he stops and realizes the harmless quiet surrounding him.

By the empty feeling of the place, the gray light touching his furniture and the gun in his outstretched arm, he judges it is early morning, much earlier than he usually awakens. He lowers the gun and shakes his head tiredly. Images of Scully on a windy rooftop swim through his mind and he remembers the dream, shuddering.

He flops back onto the couch, meaning to reclaim sleep in the scant hours left before the start of day, but it's useless. Adrenaline still courses through him and within a minute he's up again and on his way to the bathroom, scratching his stomach.

After a long piss he finally flips the light on and looks at himself in the mirror. The haunted pits beneath his eyes are dark with exhaustion. There is a defeated slump to his shoulders and the stubble in his cheeks. He hasn't looked this tired in months. Not since the first time he looked into this mirror after his return from Antarctica.

Since there is no way he'll be getting anymore sleep this morning, he sets about getting ready for work. Morning time is his favorite time, if he has it to himself in his own apartment or some motel room with body and sanity sufficiently intact. Something about the peacefulness of waking without anticipation or dread, of pulling on clothes alone in the dark, calms him. There is nothing going on in his mind now except the idle thought of which tie to pick out. No aliens or mutants slinking around in the shadows.

He's at his desk in the FBI bullpen hours before anyone else, sipping coffee and flipping through papers and file folders. More routine bullshit passed down by AD Kersh, but he's ceased to feel anything more than mild frustration at the reports of cow manure purchases. Something does still simmer within him, but the feeling of resignation overpowers it all. It doesn't matter, anyway; the first sign of an X-File and he'll be there no matter how much Kersh threatens.

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs, glancing around at the empty desks and chairs. His eyes dancing over the one behind him, placard with his partner's name placed exactly parallel to the edge of the desk, everything else in rigid order, the back of the chair leaning against the wood.

The thought insinuates itself as he turns on the computer and checks his email, noting the decreased size of an inbox which used to be full of conspiracy theories and sightings. Why does he feel so old this morning, so alone?

*

When I first entered medical school it was with the ideal notion that I might someday use the knowledge I would learn to save lives. Anatomy classes where I sliced through cadavers smelling of preservation fluids and plastic wrap were fascinating, but I looked at them only as a means to an end. How else would I learn how a living body worked -- unless I could study structure and function through a dead one?

I've come far in the years since. I've measured them through the death that has surrounded me, sometimes suffocating, sometimes enlightening. I've touched death so often that it's a wonder I'm not tainted with it, that it hasn't permeated my life so deeply that I could be a candidate for autopsy myself. Dana Katherine Scully, cause of death: too much death.

Although it may seem like it would be a relief to be working domestic terrorism cases in the agricultural Midwest, where the largest danger is in methane over-inhalation, I still would do anything to be in autopsy scrubs again. Is it morbid to want to be in a morgue? To want a corpse to present me with a puzzle only my expertise and knowledge could solve? Again, it's still a means to an end. When I entered the FBI, it was with the ideal notion that I could make a difference. I mete out justice now with my scalpel and tape recorder.

Or, I did, anyway. Actually, now all I do is question rednecks about their purchases of bovine fecal matter, under the grand title of Domestic Terrorism.

I suppose I should try and call Mulder now; it's almost 8 o'clock. I'm making coffee Scully-style, strong and with a hint of cream. I'm making two, for two Scullys.

My brother Charlie sits at my kitchen table with his head in his hands, thick fingers messing up the already sleep-tousled red hair. He knocked on my door last night with bleary drunken eyes and lurched onto my couch, asleep in minutes with his trademark snore. It was the first time I'd seen him since the holidays. This morning when I glanced into the living room he was still there, snuggled under the quilt I had placed over him.

It looks serious, since Charlie is a family man and not prone to crashing at his sister's place instead of beside his wife of ten years. It looks like I won't be going into work today. Small loss; I doubt there will be anything for me to dissect and examine, anyway, other than Kersh's imaginary corpse as I'm forced to listen to his cold velvet-on-steel voice.

I hand Charlie the coffee and watch him slurp it, avoiding my eyes. I know not to push him, not like Bill who probably would have had it dragged out of him before he hit the sofa. I know that Charlie will come around to telling me in his own time.

Sure enough, as I'm reaching for the phone to call Mulder, Charlie says, "My marriage is over."

I sit back down and look at him, sure I haven't heard right. "What?"

"It's over," he says hollowly. "She wants a divorce."

"But..." My mind flies like a million butterflies. The last time I saw them, at Christmas, when they were so happy with their two kids and another on the way, how they've been together for longer than I thought possible for my once flighty younger brother, Mom's crestfallen expression at finding out. Then I think, he can't be serious. They just had a fight or something.

But what I say stupidly instead is, "Charlie, you can't just up and decide to have a divorce. There are complications...the Church..."

"Dana, when was the last time we went to Mass, anyway?" Charlie laughs harshly. "She served me the papers yesterday."

I collect myself at the sound of his voice. This is my brother, and there's hurt written in every line of his body. I think fleetingly of Mulder, how he can show the same anguish and how I always do my best to take some part of it.

"I'm sorry," I say quietly. "What happened?"

He sighs and rubs his face beneath his eyes. There's nothing of the boy who used to be little Charlie in this adult gesture, the kid brother who aped Bill's superiority complex until he realized he didn't really have one himself. "It's just...we've been growing apart for years now. And this new baby...I thought it might bring us back together, but instead it's just put all this... _stress_...on everything."

"You seemed so happy last month, though," I tell him. "I had no idea."

He grimaces, half-smile and half-frown. "Yeah, well, we've been away from the rest of the family for so long... I guess we were just putting on a show for everyone, hoping for the best."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know." He lets out a breath and looks around my kitchen, lit so brightly it hurts the eyes. "Thanks for letting me sleep here last night, Dana, I'm sorry... I just..." His face crumples but he remains dry-eyed. Some remains of our father's conditioning, stoicism and backbone drilled into us as if we were in uniform.

I put my hand on his arm, dotted with light freckles and red hair. "It's okay. You're my brother," I say.

He doesn't answer, but he clasps my hand back.

*

He clicks his cell phone off -- knowing his habit of not showing up at the office without notice, she'd tried him there first -- with a sigh and leans back in his chair. She hasn't told him anything except that it is a family obligation. He wonders idly if it's her mother, in which case he makes a mental note to call her back later, or if maybe Bill's in a snit again about some damn thing, in which case he tries halfheartedly to suppress a chuckle. But the idea of a whole day in this mess of office gossip and unexciting, non-paranormal cases, without Scully, is enough to wipe the smile off of his face.

He resolves suddenly to get himself out of this slump, even if there is nothing to do except file expense reports. He settles down to flip through gas station receipts, motel receipts, here and there recollecting a town on the outskirts of civilization, Scully with her raised eyebrow and dry tone of voice. An image of her standing beside a rental car, one of a long line of Ford Tauruses, just stepping out with the door still open. She pins him with a characteristically frosty glare across the roof of the car and her hair flies out, caught by a Midwest wind.

That, of course, brings the dream back. He can remember every detail with crushing clarity, suddenly feeling the urge to hear her voice again as balance against the silent Scully. To hear the inflections she puts into "Mulder" with the tilt of her head, if only so the real thing can drive out the phantom echo in his dream memory.

But he doesn't turn his cell phone on because of his resolution, made after dragging her away from home last Christmas Eve. He's going to give her space, the time and air she must need away from him and the stress of searching for explanations for the unexplainable. The safety and security of investigating non-X-files -- or not investigating anything at all -- for once, immunity from AD Kersh's condescension. If he gets an X-File, he'll follow it on his own, without her. Today is the perfect opportunity to put the plan into action, to prove that he can get through the empty hours without being bothersome. So he won't call, he decides. He'll give her a whole day to herself.

The problem nagging at him, though, is what _he'll_ do with a whole day to himself. He reflects with sardonic amusement on the fact that, before he met her, he was able to go for extended periods of solitude with no worries. He had no choice but to be by himself, cloaked in his own alienating genius and obsessions. But somehow, through the years, he has become accustomed to and finally dependent on her presence, her very existence as a moving force beside him.

He doesn't really know when it happened, when she became more than just a rigid, unbelieving thorn in his side and turned into the woman whose depths he is so anxious yet fearful to plumb now. Even if he allowed himself to flip back through the clear crystal of his memory and touch all of the images of her, collected through years and moments in which they together plowed through the entire spectrum of human emotion, that moment of transformation still would not be apparent. Instead he would only find himself surrounded, as always, by the mystery of her small form, the strength in her poise, the expressive brow, all of it clouding every thought not completely essential to keeping her by his side.

And as always arrives when he isn't careful and lets himself too deeply into reflection on Scully, the guilt. Before she walked into his life, he imagines she had an ideal happiness and simplicity. Hell, before she walked into his life, he thought he was more or less happy, too. There were only the half-faded memories of his sister, here and there a vague unease and a feeling that he should be doing more with them. There were no dead fathers or sisters, there was no cancer, no missing time, there was no little girl who came and went in silence and unspoken tears. There was no hole in his chest because she had not arrived to bore one.

Around him the office complex comes to life as agents enter and begin their business. They barely give him or Scully's empty chair a glance. The Spooky couple have been keeping to themselves, bringing their own basement gloom and isolation up to the higher floor. Not to mention the stigma of OPC dissatisfaction and censure.

Now he simply fingers the papers littering his desk with halfhearted motivation. It doesn't seem worth it when he feels just as alone now as when he really was this morning.

*

I finally manage to get my brother into the shower so I can re-gather the pieces of my day. I almost feel like calling my mother, but it's been so long since Charlie or I have gone to her with our troubles that I wouldn't know where to start. When we were younger she was always the supportive one, the soothing voice and perfume scent who would listen seriously and offer hugs. Our father was rarely sympathetic. With him each experience was a lesson of life to be learned and incorporated into our coordinated marching steps.

First Missy broke away, then Charlie, and finally me. I suppose Bill, being the oldest, is still more or less the child of our parents. He lives in their house, anyway, or at least an exact replica. He'll grow up to _be_ the Captain, one day.

But since Missy is gone now, Charlie and I only have each other.

I dress in casual clothes and clean up the remnants we have left around the apartment, stained coffee cups and the blankets and pillows on the couch. Scattered around my living room are framed photographs of family; in one on the mantel I see Charlie with his wife Jen and their two sons. I recall that her due date for the third child is pretty soon. What an awful time to end a marriage.

I suppose this may be why I've never seriously entertained the thought of being in one myself, at least not in years. Although recently I've expressed to Mulder my desire for a "normal" life, I didn't really mean the husband and 2.5 kids and a dog scenario. I just meant the kind where I could get a decent sleep at least five nights out of the week, where I didn't have to worry about keeping my job or what creature or government agency might be stalking me next. But ironically, though the past month has been devoid of any X-File, I miss it.

Mulder is halfway right. Any life I might have tried to enter after all we've been through would be so completely abnormal to me that I'd probably suffer from some kind of personality disorder. I've lost contact with most of the people who I could consider normal. Who would I marry, anyway? Who would marry me, a barren cancer-survivor with more emotional scars and calluses than any number of crime victim statistics. A woman with a partner who is more a human leech than anything else.

But, that's unfair to Mulder. Sometimes I really have to stop and realize what he's all about. When I was twelve years old my only worries were whether or not I'd look like Missy when I became her age, what I would have to do to make my father approve of me. But I had all of my family, even if sometimes there were long tours of duty or the occasional military brat uprooting. There was never any earth-shattering, horrible night in which I watched one of my siblings taken away from me forever, leaving a jagged tear in the fabric of my short existence.

Sometimes I honestly wonder how he even keeps on living with such a bottomless canyon over his shoulder. There are moments when I can feel his gaze on me like the heavy weight of a razor, and I know there are volumes hidden behind his dark eyes, which he'd spill with relief if I gave him any inclination I'd listen. At times, I just might, but there are rifts and valleys and glaciers still between us. Landmarks and earthquakes sprung where he has left me behind, when his intuitive and arrogant genius has overridden my science, when I have saved him time and again from death he's instigated on his own. I can only realize so much about him at a given moment, one crisis at a time. If I tried to take in more, what would be left of me?

My phone rings as Charlie walks out of the bathroom, half clothed and toweling his red hair, finally beginning to look less hungover and more resolute.

"Dana," Jen says, "is he there?"

"Uh..." is all I can say. "What makes you think..." I've always been a terrible liar. Another of the Captain's lessons.

"I just...we've been having some problems...he didn't come home last night, not that I expected him to...if he's there could you tell him I want to talk to him."

"Well, if I see him..." I try not to make a commitment. I like Jen, but domestic tranquility is something I know nothing about maintaining. I'm not qualified to give marital counseling, not even to family members.

She sighs. "Dana, why did this happen to us?"

"I don't really know." God, is that constructive.

"I've just...I've never been so angry. He's my husband and I... But finally something just snapped and I couldn't take it anymore."

I think that's a familiar feeling, although I've never been married. It makes me think of the many times when I have been prepared to leave Mulder and this quest which has sometimes almost consumed us whole. One big, final ditch for all of the ones he has committed. But all of my life, I've seen divorce as a last resort, as a form of abandonment. Our partnership is enough like a marriage that I've come back every time.

I end the conversation on as supportive a note as I can, Charlie standing nearby with a newly stricken look on his face. "It was her, wasn't it?"

I nod. "She said she wants to talk to you."

"I can't. This is my whole life she's taking away from me. Fuck," he mutters.

I glance at my watch. It's near noon. Time passes when you're grieving. "Look, why don't we go out for lunch. I think some food and fresh air will give you a little perspective."

He laughs bitterly as I grab our coats. "Perspective," he snorts.

*

He arrives at the crowded little restaurant where he and Scully usually go for lunch, intending to be in and out with the speed of those who hate to eat alone, when he spots her at their table with another man.

He's tempted to back out unobtrusively, to hold to his resolution despite the wildly jealous wonderings his mind twists into, but she looks up and sees him towering over the rest of the customers. No surprise on her face, but a mildly raised eyebrow. She beckons him over and as he lurches towards them he notices the man has red hair.

"Charlie, this is my partner, Fox Mulder. Mulder, my younger brother." She gestures along with the introductions gracefully.

He plops into the chair with a measure of relief -- which he refuses to consciously acknowledge -- and shakes the man's hand. "Nice to meet you. So, you're the family obligation," he says in a dry teasing tone.

To his surprise the other man seems to suppress a wince. He notices a tightening of Scully's lips and realizes he may have just stepped in it. _Shit, I hate a family drama._ He's saved by the arrival of the waitress to take their orders.

"Uh...I've heard a lot about you," Charlie says, gamely, after she  
leaves.

"I hope not from Bill," Mulder rejoins weakly.

There's a ghost of a smile. "Well, from him, but also from the female side of the family. All good stuff there."

"Even from Scully?" Charlie looks confused for a moment before he realizes with a slight grin who Mulder is talking about.

"Well, Dana doesn't offer much in the way of description, positive or negative, about anything," that with a commiserating expression from Mulder and another raised eyebrow and a half-smile from Scully, "but I heard a lot from Melissa and from my mother."

"Ah," Mulder nods.

A strained silence, which Scully breaks when she turns to him and asks, "Anything important I'm missing at work?"

"Not much," Mulder answers, "just Kersh calling me in for another ass-tearing, but he didn't ask where you were."

"Dana, I didn't realize I was keeping you from work," her brother protests. "You should have told me."

"It's not a big deal, it's not like I have a timeslip I have to check in and out every time I go."

"But still," he continues in a lower tone, "my problems shouldn't..."

Mulder politely doesn't say anything and pretends to be absorbed in his iced tea, but in actuality he watches them covertly out of the corner of his eye. The two siblings in their discussion match each other for intensity and backbone, but he's willing to bet Charlie learned it all from his older sister. From both of his older sisters, even.

In the middle of their meal Scully excuses herself to use the ladies' room, and again there is an awkward silence. Neither of the men are social creatures accustomed to bland, harmless conversation. But finally Charlie coughs apologetically.

"I feel I should explain about Dana taking the day off. I'm staying with her temporarily, until my divorce gets under way."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize," Mulder offers. "My parents were divorced. It's a hard thing." His sympathy sounds like a hollow shell in the bustle of the restaurant.

"Yeah, it's hard for everyone involved." Charlie takes a sip of his water and looks morosely down at his hands, fingers twisting his gold wedding band. "You know, it's like suddenly you realize, the woman you once thought you would spend your entire life with, you don't want to be in the same company for a minute longer. You share two kids, a stagnant bank account, a house that feels like a prison. And you look back at ten years and wonder if you wasted it."

Mulder hesitates. "Maybe you just need a little separation time. Some space."

"Sometimes space just isn't enough. Not now, anyway."

There doesn't seem to be much else to say after that.

*

"Your partner seems alright," Charlie says to me as we drive out of the parking lot. "Less full of bullshit than a lot of government types." He grins as I raise an eyebrow. "I'm glad I finally got the chance to meet him for myself."

I nod. Part of me wants to mention that Charlie has never met him before because he was never around to do so, but now is not the time.

In a rare showing of misplaced hospitality, Charlie invited Mulder to dinner at my apartment. We had small-talked about our lines of work, Charlie being as fascinated with G-man duties as Mulder was with a man who cooked for a living. So my brother invited him over to try some of his trademark cuisine. I find the idea slightly unsettling. After several abortive attempts to spend time together purely outside of work, Mulder and I now rarely socialize for the sake of socializing.

"If you two are so close, why haven't you ever done this before?" Charlie asks, as we make our way through aisles of produce in the supermarket near my home.

"We're not that kind of close," I say to him. "We work together, and being partners in such a high-stress job requires a great deal of trust, but not necessarily friendship or any other warm feelings." But the words sound false even to me. I wonder suddenly what the hell I'm talking about, what do I know, anyway.

"Uh huh," Charlie murmurs, as he inspects a head of lettuce in his hands.

"Mulder is just...he's a difficult person. Not always the best company. Sometimes I need space, and he fortunately recognizes that."

Charlie glances at me quizzically. "Well, I won't pry. But if you don't want him over for dinner..."

"That's not the issue here. It's not a problem. I was just explaining." I feel a little confused. These words have come out of me by rote countless times before to friends and relatives I've placed in the just-wouldn't-understand category. Now it seems like an effort to get them out, to force them past that bulge I get in my throat when I'm lying.

Charlie nods understandingly.

At home there's a message on my answering machine, which I play as we unpack the groceries in my kitchen. Charlie juggles onions and looks like my little brother again, whistling when he almost misses one.

From the living room floats the disembodied voice of our mother, "Dana...Charlie, I know you're there...I'm just calling because...Jen's water broke earlier this afternoon and she's gone into labor--"

The sound of onions thumping to linoleum as Charlie rushes to the answering machine. I grab my keys and our coats again and guide his jittering elbow as we head back out the door.

*

"...so I'm letting him borrow my car to take Jen and the baby back home tomorrow morning. Mom's already left. Could you come pick me up?" Scully's voice asks. "Sorry about dinner."

"Sure thing, be there in an hour." He clicks the cell phone off.

The hospital is at once too familiar and too strange to him, as he strides down the halls smelling of disinfectant and sterile cleanliness. He can't remember ever having been in the maternity ward, though. He feels a little nervous at the sight of all the pink and blue, balloons and stuffed animals, feeling big and awkward and taking up too much space.

She stands just outside of the viewing window to the nursery for newborns, her hair falling slightly in a wave across her cheek. He glides up beside her and acts on the inexplicable urge to tuck it behind her ear. She starts, but smiles slightly when she realizes who he is. "That's her." She points to a scrawny pale face swathed in flowered blankets and mittens.

Mulder leans in slightly, his breath fogging the window and partly obscuring the newborn. "Amazing."

"They felt it would be another boy, but they got a surprise when she came out." Scully chuckles. He looks down at her feeling an answering grin tug at his mouth.

"What are they naming her?"

She pauses. "Melissa Rose. I'm not sure if it was Charlie's choice or my mother's, though."

He nods, pursing his lips thoughtfully. He wonders if she will say anything more, but knows it would be wise not to push her. At any rate, he doesn't want to ruin this new snapshot memory he has of her surrounded by baby colors.

"I'm tired," is all that she says. "Take me home, Mulder."

On the way, he asks, "What about the divorce?"

She turns to look at him, streetlights flashing at irregular intervals across her brow. "So he told you about that? I don't know. They'll stay together until the baby gets a little older, I imagine. After that..." She shrugs, a movement that catches in his peripheral vision. "It could all just blow over."

"Hopefully..." he ventures. "But it's hard to forget when someone tries to leave you... I should know."

She doesn't answer, but in the humming darkness between them he can feel her wince and subsequent disquiet.

When they pull up in front of her apartment building and she makes no move to get out of the car, he leaves the engine on, heat running. He waits for her to approach whatever issue she has in her characteristic way, slow husky voice and careful words.

"You know, we've never really talked about that conversation we had...before Antarctica," she says finally. "I mean, we've talked about it, but we've never discussed it, not to my satisfaction and I believe not to yours, either."

"No, no we haven't," he agrees softly and turns so that he can face her profile. "But what you'd like to discuss, and what I'd like to discuss, are not necessarily the same thing."

"Well, I think it's obvious that we came to a crisis there," she says gently. "We could have gone any number of ways if we hadn't ended up on that ice. I...was ready to leave you -- the X-Files..." He registers the stumble in her words but she doesn't look at him to acknowledge that she made one. "And I think that there is the crux of the situation."

"You think we haven't discussed that fully? I thought we decided, after we got back, that neither of us would give up. That we'd both keep going."

"Yes, we decided to continue to search for the truth." She pauses, takes a breath. "But Mulder, I don't see us doing that right now, and I don't think you do, either. What I'm trying to comprehend here is why, and why aren't you doing anything about it?"

"What do you mean? I'm not sure I comprehend what saying."

"I just..." She stops, gathering herself. "This partnership we have, it's always been based on a high level of trust. I mean, I think it would be fair to say that we don't just trust each other with our lives. I trust you with a large portion of my future, with the expectation that one day we will see the men behind these conspiracies brought to justice. That I'll finally bring meaning to all of the things which have been done to me, which have been done to you. I know that to you, nothing else matters."

"That's true on certain levels, Scully..." He trails off when she puts a cool hand on his, finally turning towards him. Her face is shadowed by the streetlights but he can make out her expression, the one she wears when she is deadly earnest and trying to get him to remain on a straight path and listen to her.

"But the same is true of me, Mulder. I wish sometimes that you wouldn't doubt that. This quest of yours is mine, too."

"Of course it is," he says automatically. "Why would you think I see it as anything different?"

"I know you, Mulder; after nearly six years, I should. I know the way you shoulder burdens as if they had your name engraved on them. But I'm not just a burden to you, I'm not just another surrogate sister on your mantel you can swear revenge for. I'm fighting just as hard as you are. That is what you have to trust me with."

"I do trust you, Scully. Why do you doubt that?" He tries to get inside her head, to find the answer there, but as always he finds the walls hard to scale.

She turns her head to look out of her window at the front door to her building. After a sigh, she says, "Why aren't we investigating X-Files together?"

"Scully, they shut us down..."

She whips around to pierce him with eyes like broken glass. "You know what I mean. I'm referring to the way you constantly leave me at the office to deal with Kersh, while you go off to God knows where, telling me nothing until you want some kind of medical exam or some lab test. Maybe you're operating under the illusion that you don't want to get me in further trouble with the Bureau, and I do appreciate it, Mulder, but we're _partners_... To me, that means we work together. In the same physical space, with more or less the same level of knowledge."

He drops his own eyes before hers, unwilling to let himself probe their depths for the hurt he knows is buried in them. He can feel it anyway, static sparks in the air around them, a lump in his throat. And the truth of her words hitting him like pinpricks.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "I was unaware that you were having such problems with our working relationship."

The hand holding his tightens, and he squeezes it back. "Mulder, you've got to stop thinking that I'm going to leave you. I'm not; it doesn't even matter if we're working X-Files now, but you have to understand that the truth we're both fighting for is in them. I know you think that I'm enjoying these new assignments, more than I would paranormal ones, and it's considerate of you to want to let me concentrate on them. But then you're not allowing us to find the truth together, to be partners in the fullest sense of the word."

His head swivels up suddenly, dark eyes intense, and it's her turn to drop her gaze as she realizes other meanings to what she has just said. This is dangerous ground, murky water, another thing left to be discussed. But she doesn't feel she can right now. The memory floats in her mind of his face impossibly close to hers, the associated feelings of his warm hands cradling her face, panic and struggling reason and stamped down exhilaration. An "I love you" spoken from a drugged hospital bed.

"Anyway, I...those are my feelings. What you said, about knowing what it's like when someone tries to leave you, it just triggered them. I'm sorry if I--"

He grabs her chin suddenly, not ungently, and makes her look at him. "Don't, don't apologize. You're absolutely right. I don't know, I wanted to give you some space or something. But of course, you're right. You're always right." He chuckles painfully. "We've been partners this long and I'm just now admitting it." Then his voice changes into something altogether more layered and full of messages she receives along certain nerve endings. "Thank you, Scully. Things will be different, I promise."

She nods, not trusting herself to answer more than a few words, "Well...good we talked," suddenly conscious of the heat of his body near hers and her chin still in his grip, but more of a caress now, really. Again, the panic of danger spiking up from her abdomen, claustrophobia suppressing wild urges.

"Mulder, I'll see you tomorrow." The words are clipped suddenly, and she winces.

After a few seconds he lets go of her, and she opens the passenger door to let cold winter air in and herself out. The night outside is brisk and cuts into the skin exposed to it. She shuts the door on the warmth radiating from the car's interior and acknowledges the wave of Mulder's hand with her own before starting up the path to the front door.

The car remains stationary, engine still spinning, even after she closes it behind her. He doesn't pull away from the curb until after she waves to him again from her lighted apartment window, the rise and fall of a hand slightly trembling.

  
_____________________________

  
January 1999, XAPEN


End file.
